Ten Days

So of all the many experiences this year, this one was probably the most bizarre. Some 17 of us writers and illustrators and 4 mentors, were sent to Shantiniketan by Goethe Institute and made to stay in a beautiful home, where for 10 days we were stuffed and stuffed and stuffed with 7 course meals until we could barely walk and where we staggered around for the first three days asking questions like, What’s the jam today? Is there any more dessert left? Didn’t you looove the tea time snack and Gosh wasn't the fish delicious? Then somewhere on the third day, we were sternly reprimanded, told to get off our asses and get back to working on the theme of ‘Children Understand More than we Believe’. Somehow in the middle of the meals, we managed to do just that and lots of good things happened. Here are some pictures -

Just part of a seven course breakfast

and below, Urvashi Butalia from Zubaan

Just one of the sixteen erm, 

very lively young people (below). 

My delicate nerves usually sheltered by solitude, 

have yet to regain their equilibrium.

Every meal

This particular dessert below was Nolen Gur Rossogulla.

And somewhere along the way, the work -

And the presentation.

Fan mail

And one last picture which still 

gives me nightmares.

Bits and Pieces on my Table

1) Rub honey into the night's back,

2) Make sure the moon is fed,

3)Bathe the ocean,

4) Warm sing the trees.

            ~ Tend

My mother resembled a character out of an Isabel Allende novel. she was one of those Piscean/Aquarians who would often declare that she could see visions of things that happened in a place, of incidents that might have happened if... She would periodically move heaven and earth so that the world around her could fit into her visions irrespective of the disruptions it caused. 

One thing she did prove right was the fact that she would die and some five years before her death she went about clearing out the books in her large cellar with the energy characteristic of every mission she undertook. The result was that I was given some very beautiful old books. 

I treasure these books for their beauty except one, a vintage PR exercise about Queen Victoria. Because of the subject matter, I've decided it can be sacrificed in the name of art. The paper is so old it practically disintegrates at times but the cherubic faces of the little royal princes is perfect for cutting up and playing with. The resulting compositions have become bizarre worlds within the pages of my new Moleskine sketchbook and I have been taken aback by what has emerged. Perhaps they are comparable to my mother's visions? In this case, I am thankful they are only on paper.

These pictures I made during the last two days are probably a progression of The Red Book project which I did years ago. They have turned out more sophisticated and muted compared to an earlier cutting up of Kings and Queens within The Redbook. I have included a picture of it below.

Deep down inside, I'm mad … we're all mad here, really. 

If you've read this far, you're probably about to go nuts right now.

~ from another excellent interview by Mahendra Singh.

The Find

Recently, a friend who is an avid traveller and who is usually known for understating things, gushed about The Road to Oxiana, a book by Robert Byron that he had read innumerable times. I was intrigued at his enthusiasm and wished for a copy. While the immediate thing to do in this click of a button day and age is to order from Amazon, I still prefer to take a different route, via a second hand book store.

After a meeting with a client at MG Road I dropped by at Bookworm and looked through the travel section. This beautiful blue hardbound copy was just lying there waiting to be found and taken. This is serendipity.

The Road to Oxiana is considered the greatest of all pre-war travel books. I quote Paul Fussell, "What Ulysses is to the novel between the wars, and what The Waste Land is to poetry, The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book."

I will probably add an excerpt or two here after I read the book, but for now, here is a review of Robert Byron:

Review

To Rise Above

"We forget about the spaciousness

above the clouds

but it’s up there.

The sun’s up there too.

When words we hear don’t fit the day,

when we worry

what we did or didn’t do,

what if we close our eyes,

say any word we love

that makes us feel calm,

slip it into the atmosphere

and rise?

Creamy miles of quiet.

Giant swoop of blue."

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Our aversion to female success

Out in the Garden

since the thing perhaps is to eat flowers

and not to be afraid.

                           ~ e.e.cummings

Dark and Stormy

These two images are preparatory drawings made for a book cover.They have nothing whatsoever to do with America.I dislike America thinking that it is the centre of the universe and I find it tiresome that people make it seem so. The best statement someone said to me in these two days is: Fuck T, now let's get on with ourselves.

After a long time I got to work with an art director whom I really like and respect and who gets the best out of me. Her responses are prompt and she knows what she wants. It was she who suggested I make some sketches first so that there was an option of clouds to choose from. We were all pleased with the way it turned out. While I cannot show the final cover yet, I am quite happy to share these with my blog readers.

Thundercloud and Bare Tree

From the Bits and Pieces box

I had to remove the foreground of mountains to replace on a different background. When I peeled off the mountain, the Fevistick and remnants of charcoal ended up producing this very interesting texture.I drew and cut out a tree and placed it over to make an image. I love the variety of textures that has resulted in this happy accident.The best surprises happen while playing.

The Green Bathing Pond

My host told me that outside the cities, the people of Kerala still bathed in rivers and ponds. She told me about her great aunt who walked down a path from her house to bathe every morning in her own personal bathing pond. Seeing my wide-eyed enthrallment, arrangements were made to take me there, to see the ancestral home and the great aunt's beautiful bathing pond.

This was the best and most memorable experience of my visit to Kerala.  

All the chatter in your mind suddenly stops as your brain cells get taken over by green undergrowth.

And then the experience of bathing here which must be some sort of baptismal renewal every single morning.

Exhale...

And then I flew back to Banglur.

Synagogue

Back to my Kerala posts once more.

Since the big synagogue at Jew Town was closed on Sabbath, my host insisted and took me to another smaller synagogue tucked away inside a village, the presence of which very few people will know. On the way by taxi, through the unremitting green beauty of the Kerala countryside, my host would tap me on the shoulder and point out, and in the midst of the verdure I would see structures like elaborate iced wedding cakes, complicated spaceships and Walt Disney fairy tale castles. These were churches (gasp) and if I hadn’t been told they were those, I would never have guessed.

The walk to the synagogue was lovely, we got a glimpse of village life and we saw old houses like this one above.

A Kerala king gave the Jews some land, and this was a pillar to mark that, to say something like ‘From here is yours’.

This is the walk along the road to the synagogue.

But the Jews who worshiped there also came by boat along a river at the end of this road.

And the beautiful synagogue, maintained by the government as a monument.An enthusiastic and friendly Hindu guide explained the ways of worship within the synagogue to us. No worship takes place here in this particular one however.
Enjoy the pictures :)